Are there? There are three alleged tenors in the album top 10: Russell Watson ("the Voice"); blind, bearded Tuscan Andrea Bocelli ("the man with the most beautiful voice in the world"); and new kid on the block Vittorio Grigolo ("il Pavarottino"). Opera aficionados are unmoved. "It's got bugger all to do with opera," says John Allison, editor of Opera magazine. "Just because somebody sings something in Italian doesn't mean it's opera. I suppose you could call them tenors, but don't call them operatic tenors. Their voices are not good enough and most of the repertoire is desperate."

For Allison, being a tenor means getting through one of the great tenor roles in an opera house - Cavaradossi in Tosca, Rodolfo in La Bohème, Tristan in Tristan und Isolde. It does not mean singing You Raise Me Up (Watson), Can't Help Falling In Love (Watson and Bocelli), or All In Love Is Fair (Grigolo). Grigolo's publicists claim "his singing hauls down the barriers that have sprung up between the worlds of opera and pop". But buyers of his album, In the Hands of Love, are unlikely to move on to Handel. "People are conned into thinking they are listening to opera," says Oliver Condy, editor of BBC Music Magazine. "It looks like it's got status, but it's bogus."

So, three "tenors" in the top 10 does not mean a sudden upsurge in opera. "People who like this stuff are unlikely to go to Glyndebourne," adds Condy. "It takes more than one Italian with soupy, sentimental accompaniments to get you into Eugene Onegin." What it does mean is that Sunday is Mother's Day, and mothers have a soft spot for soupy Italians - or, at least, their offspring think they do. "The music industry has got smarter at capitalising on diary events," says Paul Williams, news editor at Music Week. "At this time of year, record companies release records they think mothers will be happy to receive. Hence three crossover records in the top six." Hence, too, the presence in the chart of Johnny Mathis and Barry Manilow. This is the definitive easy-listening chart, and ultimately Watson, Bocelli and Grigolo have more in common with Manilow than Melchior.